If you were of concert going age and female in the 90s, you knew about Lilith Fair. You packed up the car with your girlfriends and headed to the closest outdoor venue to drink deep from the chalice of Sarah McLachlan, Fiona Apple, the Indigo Girls, and many of the top female artists of the moment.
Third-wave feminist lore has it that the idea for the tour sprang from Sarah’s outrage that radio stations continued to refuse to play songs by two women musicians in a row. (Yes, there’s a whole lot more to the Fumbling Towards Ecstasy singer than the commercials about suffering puppies.)
I don’t have any concert memories to share–I had mono in the summer of 1997 and my ticket went to waste, unfortunately–but I’d never forget Lilith, “the woman who would not lie beneath him.”
(Were you at Lilith Fair? Tell me your concert story in the comments!)
When Pearl Gregor told me she was working on a story about this mythic being, I admit I knew little more about her than what could fit on a concert t-shirt.
Medieval Jewish lore tells us that Lilith was Adam’s first wife, the woman who preceded Eve in the Garden of Eden and was banished for refusing to submit to male authority.
Perhaps she was, but she was so much more…
This Week on KnotWork Storytelling
Lilith was a goddess or a demon, depending on whose holy books or sacred folk tradition you follow.
In this week’s episode of KnotWork Storytelling, Pearl Gregor channels Lilith’s divine voice, decrying all the ways she has been misunderstood and offering us a renewed story of Lilith as the rising power of the long repressed feminine.
For Pearl, who has researched Lilith lore extensively, the story is deeply personal. Lilith came to Pearl long before Pearl knew to start looking for the goddess she’d eventually call the “emerging energy of the mysterious dark feminine.”
As Pearl describes it:
In 1993, I knew virtually nothing of mythology and certainly nothing of mythology beyond Christianity.
Imagination was dethroned, shipwrecked, exiled or at minimum misplaced. Descartes banished the psyche, together with dreams, images, myths, totems, idols, devils and saints, in order to create a vision of reasoned, rational reality.
Now, dreams kindle and rekindle my imagination
Pearl tells us about Lilith that helped her heal a traumatic birth experience decades after it happened. And then, she describes a dream that came slightly after and gave her the phrase “Eleusinian Mysteries” for the first time. After this first glimpse of the the ancient rites of Demeter and Persephone, Pearl woke the next morning, feeling for the very first time, “I am pleased to be a woman.”
Our Guest
Pearl Gregor is an explorer and a seeker. She is a writer, dream coach, story teller, author of the three books in the series Dreams Along the Way, and an international public speaker. Pearl is a farmer, grandmother, a blogger and a Crone of wisdom.
Pearl experienced years of personal turmoil beginning about age nine. Nothing. But nothing, worked. Then at age 43, she discovered meditation and in December 1988 learned that she could ask for a dream. That first dream unleashed an avalanche of change. Like the Myth of the Goddess Inanna, Pearl lived the descent into the underworld. Like the Myth of the Goddess Lilith, Pearl has lived this process of life, death, and rebirth.
Join Pearl to explore the deep mysteries of dreams, psyche and soul. You can read her books, or join her in her latest passion, a Dream Readers’ Myth Circle: www.dreamsalongtheway.com
Last Call: An In-Person Event on October 21!
I’ll be returning to Moss and Moonlight Sanctuary for the Healing Arts in Hopewell Junction, NY for a Samhain Day Retreat.
Join me for the Celtic Storytelling Circle where I’ll be weaving the tale of Mongfind, the Irish Sovereignty Goddess-Queen-Witch who was celebrated by “women and the rabble” on Samhain.